Sunday, September 9, 2012

The Russian Lady and the Bus Driver

It’s not the case that I have to go to the
chiropractor on a Thursday, but it gives me a perfect opportunity to walk up
Agrippas St. from the Maccabi office to the shuk on the day when my mind is
focused on what to prepare for Shabbat.That
was the situation two weeks ago, which one addition. Our daughter Natania has a
particular fondness for free lunches – in fact, I don’t think she’s ever met
one she didn’t like.Hebrew University
is on recess until after The Hagim, but that morning she was at the gym
on the Givat Ram campus, which is close enough to Jaffa St. to facilitate a
luncheon date with her daddy.So that
was the plan: we would meet me for lunch and she would help me shlep everything
back to Ma’le Adumim – although neither of us could have imagined what would
happen on the way home.

This particular trip to our chiropractor was itself
particularly memorable; he and I identified and named a previously unconsidered
medical problem.I explained to Dr. B.
that I was once again having a problem with my left shoulder (the rotary or
rotator cuff).He asked me if I ever go
swimming?About as often as our
Tonkinese cats, Moby and Cookie – even though there are indoor and outdoor pools
about ten minutes from our apartment.He
inquired if my shoulder hurt when I go up to duchen (recite the priestly
blessing which, because of our great joy at being in The Land, the cohanim
[that’s me] recite every morning [assuming one is in shul], not just on the Hagim)?
Yes, my shoulder hurts then.In fact, I
often need my right hand to help lower my left arm.I must be suffering from Cohanic Shoulder Syndrome
– somewhat akin to Tennis Elbow or Carpal Tunnel.Consider that for thousands of years, distant
relatives of mine have been getting up before a crowd and going, “Yeverechecha……,”
and nobody has noticed the connection between raising your hands in that
strange Star-Trek-like gesture and the ensuing pain in the shoulder – until
now!Here I have spent my life writing
and photographing, and my lasting claim to fame will be this chance medical
discovery?!!“The discoverer of this
strange malady never made it past Bio I in college….”)

Flush with excitement about my impending fame, I headed off
up the hill to meet Natania at the Indian restaurant.About a year and a half ago, I had read about
this place and spent about an hour wandering around the shuk until I found it,
on a little street near the “Iraqi shuk,” one of the neighborhoods in the
larger Mahane Yehuda.The food is simple
and quite good – assuming you’re partial to lentils and curry – and we’ve been
back on several occasions.The first
time we went, the only thing ‘happening’ on that street was a shop that sold
Ethiopian specialties (whatever they might be; I’ve never ventured
inside).Today, the street has come
alive, probably because the shuk is being revived.You walk down the hill, and there is also a
health food restaurant, a French bistro called Chez Mimi, a Georgian dairy
restaurant (the country not the state), and a pub.I should stress that none of these places are
as big as your living room, but, like people, great things start in little
packages.Or, as it say in the haftarah
we just read, “The smallest shall increase a thousandfold, and the least into a
mighty nation” (Artscroll translation). Come to think of it, Rami Levy, the owner of
the eponymous chain of markets, started with one stall in the shuk.So I’m not making this up.

The Indian food is as good as ever; the restaurant décor has
been improved; and they even have real live menus now instead of scribbling the
choices of the day on the wall.Alas, the
service was, shall we say, lackadaisical, and we chose to go elsewhere for our
mid-day jolt of caffeine (for me, some of the thick mixture they call Ice Café,
obtainable at the ice cream store in the crowded, closed part of the market).Then, with glad hearts and bellies full, off
we went to complete our shopping.

(Actually, I had started the ball rolling even before I
stepped foot in the Maccabi clinic.Stop
one was to get some loose tea from a store on Jaffa where most people go to buy
freshly ground coffee beans – except that I get my coffee from Debbie, a gourmand
who lives five minutes away from us.She
doesn’t just grind her own beans; she gets kilos at a time and roasts the coffee
to order.But I needed some tea and
there I was at the shuk.Stop two was for
a loaf of super-delicious bread from Russell’s, a boutique bakery right next to
the best little cafe in Jerusalem, which, as a famous catcher once said, no one
goes to anymore because they’re too crowded.)

We retraced our steps back to the Iraqi shuk for some
serious produce inspection: tomatoes and cucumbers from one stand, peppers of
every color from another stand, celery, mushrooms, and scallions here, green
beans there. There are several things to
note about this section of the market. The prices are just a little lower here
than in some of the other sections; it gets a zero on the upscale scale (each
of these stalls has been there from day one); and it’s a great refutation of
the Lunatic Left’s cries of “apartheid” in The Land.Not only do Arabs work there – as they do all
over the shuk – but there are Arab-owned stands side by side with others owned
by Jews – and people buy from all of them.If you want the best green beans in town, I’ll take you to the Arab kid
who sells them.

It’s amazing how fast one’s cloth shopping bags fill
up.By the time we have purchased grapes
and other seasonal fruit in the “open shuk” (the watermelon is a real bargain,
but who wants to carry one back to our neck of the woods?), there’s not an inch
of space in either cloth bag or my backpack, not even enough for a sprig of
parsley.Time to head home. Take the
light rail one stop back and get on the 174 bus early enough to get our choice of
seats.And now comes the funnest part of
my day.

The bus ride back to Ma’ale Adumim was uneventful, until
we got to the stop right by our big shopping mall.There a woman got one with six kids.Now no one gets on a bus by herself with six
kids unless she’s on the way to or from the funny farm – if you get my
drift.You might be assuming that she
was a fertile Hareidi type, but, in fact, she was a middle-aged Russian
lady.They clearly weren’t all her
children; maybe none of them were – although all of them were blonde and shared
a common genetic pre-disposition. They were all about the same age, and she was
undoubtedly in the day-care business. The kids all scrambled to find seats, and
the woman stayed in the front to deal with the driver.I couldn’t hear the conversation very well,
but I quickly figured out what was going on from its length and the way the two
of them were talking.This Russian lady
was negotiating with the driver over how much she had to pay!

“How much for each child?”

“Four
shekels.”“I’ll give you three.”“Four shekels.”“I
have six children with me; I want a discount.”

“Four shekels each.”

“Twenty
five shekels for all of us, not one agora more.”

“Four shekels for each of you.”

“We’re
only going a few more stops…….”

No one else in the bus paid the slightest attention to this
little scene – as if it happened every day. We had now gone the five stops from
the center of town to where we have to get off, right around the corner from
our building.They were still going at
it, and I have no idea what finally happened – except that we were in The Land,
that surreal place where Russian ladies get to haggle with drivers over the cost
of a child’s seat on a bus!

About Me

I made aliyah in the summer of 2007 along with my wife Barbara,one daughter, Natania, and an elderly cat named Mimi (now deceased)to Ma'ale Adumim, a community of about 40,000 Jewish souls -- a little bit east of Yerushalayim. (My other daughter, Tina, made aliyah on her own a few weeks before we did and is living and working in Tel Aviv -- along with her new husband, David.) I will be learning Hebrew, working on this blog as well as other writings, and continuing to do traditional and now digital photography as I have been doing for almost 40 years.